We take a look at the Surface Pro 4 from Microsoft #Gitex2015

Its Gitex time. It has never been as important and as relevant of a Gitex as it is this year 2015. This has been a crazy month in technology and our lives. Its also been quite crazy for Microsoft. They just announced their first ever laptop that they made, a new fitness band and more Xbox this year. They also announced the Surface Pro 4, the highly anticipated update to the largely successful Surface Pro 3.

Surface is a billion dollar business for Microsoft. Surface line up extends from the Pro series, through their newly announced Surface Book convertible to the corporate friendly Perspective Pixel product: Surface Hub.

While most of the attention was famously drifted away from the Pro 4, the Surface Book is getting a highly positive response. These devices are more connected to Microsoft and its ecosystem than any other device. Microsoft is actively looking for validation and the Pro 4 will be available to corporate consumers this November in the Middle-East.

“Available to corporations this November”`

The pricing for corporations will be comparable with the Surface Pro 3. Microsoft is actively working in getting the Pro 4 to consumers this year as well.

The Surface Pro 4 manages to keep the same width and height as of the Surface Pro 3 while increasing the screen size by a few inches. The bezels become slightly smaller and the tablet as a whole is just 8.4 mm thin. Its super light to hold. In the picture below its sitting on top of the Lenovo Yoga 3 PRO which is thin in its own field. A Microsoft representative said “There is really no other device like this”. Its kind of true if you don’t add the keyboard but its still one of the most well fit thin laptops that’s thinner than its predecessor.

Speaking of keyboards, the keyboard layout has changed to look more like the “chiclet” kind. The trackpad is made of glass and is about 40% larger than the Surface Pro 3. These new keyboards can be used with the surface pro 3 and there is also a version with a fingerprint sensor for Windows Hello authentication.

One of the differentiating features of Windows 10 and the Surface Pro 4 is the ability to use your face as your password. This is best represented by using Intel’s RealSense technology – a technology that uses over 70 points on your face to authenticate you. Windows Hello facial recognition is present on the Surface Pro 4.

Microsoft needed to make the pen a better experience on their already loved screen, so they introduced PixelSense. A new fancy term for making the screen separation so thin it almost feels as if the e-ink is being drawn directly form the tip of the new Surface Pen.

The new Surface Pen has an eraser now and comes with 1024 pressure points. It lasts for over a year and has some neat Cortana trigger and OneNote integration.

We tried the pen and it’s really one of the better ones out there. PixelSense is really what it says. Writing with the pen and its multiple pen tips encourages you to use the pen more. Microsoft said that 50% of Surface Pro 3 users use the pen. No wonder it’s bundled with the surface Pro 4.

A video posted by TechView.me (@techviewme) on Oct 18, 2015 at 2:31am PDT

This is the Surface Pro 4 in comparison with the Lenovo YOGA 3 PRO ultra-book.

The Surface pro 4 gets about 12 hours of battery on the new Skylake processor, which is Intel’s 6th generation processor. There really isn’t any tablet as fast as the SP4. Microsoft says its 30% faster than the Pro 3 and about 50% faster than a MacBook Air.

I sat down with the Middle East manager of Windows and devices at Microsoft Gulf- Me. Mohammaed Arif asked him a few questions in this important change in Microsoft. I asked him about the entire Surface line up and about Microsoft’s culture in the region. More of that coming later.